With all respect for the man of letters, we are not yet quite ready to admit that the trumpeter is better than the soldier, or the painter greater than the lion.

What can be said more, or what can be said better, to sum up the life of an American citizen?

He offered his life for his country when life was all before him.

He had discharged honorably life's highest duty, and his cup of honor and of glory was full.

He was, in the first place, always a gentleman; and a true gentleman always gives tone to any company in which he is found, whether it be among the rulers of States or the humblest gathering of friendly neighbors.

I do not think he ever asked favors, though no man was more willing to grant them.

Still less had it ever anything of ill nature or sarcasm.

His conversation was sparkling and witty and full of variety, but no spark from him was ever a cinder in the eye of his friend.

He had a learning rare among public men, and, for its variety, rare, I think, among scholars.

He would bring out bits of history, full of interest and instruction, from the most obscure sources, in common conversation.

He had read and mastered Tacitus, and a man who has mastered Tacitus has had the best gymnastic training of the intellect, both in vigor and style, which the resources of all literature can supply.

He was, in the things he stood for, as unyielding as flint and true as steel.

He had a rare and exquisite gift which, if he had been a man of letters and not a man engaged in a strenuous public life, would have brought him great fame.

The finished picture bears this inscription: 'What Titian left unfinished, Palma reverently completed, and dedicated to God.' So may our beloved Republic find always, when one servant leaves his work unfinished, another who will take it up…

Bancroft had two enthusiasms which made him a great historian-- an enthusiasm for truth which spared no labor and left no stores of information unsearched, and an enthusiastic love of country.

He believed that the great emotions and motives which move a free people are the noble, not the mean motives.

I believe his work will endure so long as the love of liberty shall endure.

He has had the rare good fortune among men of letters, to have proposed to himself a great task, requiring a lifetime for its accomplishment, the successful achievement of which is enough to make any life illustrious, and to have lived to…

As an artist he has accomplished that most difficult task of composing a history made up of many separate threads, which must keep on side by side, yet all be subordinate to one main and predominant stream.

But his narrative never loses its constant and fascinating interest.

Bancroft tells the story of thirteen States, separate, yet blending into one National life.

He said he had little sympathy for the Unitarianism of his day, "for its theology, no; for its spirituality, yes.

I had been a loving reader of Scott from my childhood, and was almost as much at home in Scotland as if I had been born in the Canongate or the Saltmarket.

It was as if I had had in my hand the crown jewels of every potentate in the world, and somebody had told me the history of each gem.

You sit in your deck-chair with the soft sea breeze on your forehead, as the mighty ocean cradle rocks you, and see the lace of an exquisite beauty that no Tyrian weaver ever devised, breaking over the blue or purple waves, with their…